I’ve been playing massively multiplayer online (MMO) games developed or published by Funcom for many years. I was actually one of the first to venture into the world of Anarchy Online, one of their first titles in the MMO space. Later on, I also played Conan Exiles for a while, which is a pretty interesting entry and extremely unique in the MMO space. Dune: Awakening is available right now on the Steam platform, and it is expected to be releasing for the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 early next year.
I mention all of this because while Dune: Awakening does so much more than pretty much any MMO that I have ever played, at its heart it’s a Funcom MMO. I recognized the interface and some of their signature quirks and perks right away. And that is a good thing, as Funcom has been perfecting RPG MMOs for a long time. And just like Anarchy Online and Conan Exiles pushed boundaries in their time, so does Dune: Awakening now, perhaps farther than any MMO has before. So, lets dive into the world of Frank Herbert’s Dune and visit Arrakis, the land of sand, spice, giant worms and the setting for the world’s newest MMO.
It also needs to be said that this review, conducted after spending about 115 hours in the world, will be looking at Dune: Awakening as an MMO. You can almost think of it as two different titles, with everything that happens up to the endgame being one part, and then the player versus player (PvP) content in The Deep Desert as the other. It could be argued that everything that happens in the early to mid-game part of Dune: Awakening, the mostly player versus enemy (PvE) area, is mostly just training for the endgame. I didn’t really think of it quite like that when I played, but I can see the merits of that argument. In any case, those who only really appreciate tightly crafted, player-centered single-player worlds or RPGs will likely not enjoy the first part of Dune: Awakening quite so much as a good single player game, and they will surely hate the endgame even more should they ever reach it.
Now, in terms of Dune: Awakening as an MMO, it’s one of the most advanced to come out in years. Funcom did so many things right in their effort to faithfully bring Frank Herbert’s sci-fi world to players who intimately know the lore from the many movies or even directly from the books. Taking a page from Star Trek and their Kelvin Timeline (which was created to let J.J. Abrams make Star Trek movies without interfering with core canon), Funcom created a separate, parallel universe for Dune: Awakening where Paul Atreides (the main protagonist from the books and movies) was never born. This makes it so that all of the events that he would have triggered never happened. That allowed Funcom to craft their new game universe exactly how Herbert did, but without being tied to well-known canon or story points. It effectively lets them create their own story within Herbert’s world, without being beholden to it.
As with most MMOs, players start out as a low-level character with few skills. You do get to pick one of several available skill trees to get you started (you can begin working on the others after finding the right NPCs to talk with later on). The classes are pretty varied, with Sword Master being good with blades, Mentat’s possessing recon and tactical skills, Planetologists being good at survival while Troopers are Dune: Awakening’s heavy weapon tanks. There is also the Bene Gesserit class which is pretty unique. They are kind of the sorcerer class slot in most MMOs, able to use The Voice power to stun or otherwise manipulate enemies while also getting buffs from being so in tune with themselves. It’s nice that while you will be going down your starting skill tree for a while, that you can jump to others later in the adventure through questing.
Dune: Awakening is a fairly complex MMO in terms of all the things that you can eventually do with crafting and base building, but at first, it’s pretty much a pure survival RPG. You will be gathering resources out in the world and turning them into everything from clothing to weapons. Even the environment itself is against you. But unlike titles such as The Long Dark or Last Train Home where blistering cold is your enemy, on Arrakis it’s the hot sun that will do you in. And the sun is powerful too. Every second that you spend out in the sun will cause a heat stroke meter to build. When it maxes out, your water level will drain faster than a bathtub with the plug pulled. And then if your water level goes to zero, you start losing health as well.
This is especially dangerous before you can craft a Fremen Stillsuit to help recycle your water, and you will need to compensate by dodging from shadowed rock to rock as you travel (or waiting for nightfall) to try and keep out of the sun. Oh, and you will, of course, also have to dodge sandworms too when out in open areas, but they are not that difficult to avoid. Still, when you see your first one, it’s impressive.
In addition to crafting personal gear, you will also need to build your first base, one of several you will construct throughout the game. Besides being a safe oasis where you can relax (assuming you can keep it powered up), bases can hold all manner of, you guessed it, crafting equipment and foundries, which you, of course, have to first build before they can start cranking out advanced parts and products. You even need to build a machine to turn the blood that you collect from fallen enemies into drinkable water. Crafters will be in heaven with Dune: Awakening as there is always something new to research and build. And in terms of base design, functional little boxes will do just fine, but adding cool cosmetics and interesting floorplans is pretty fun too. I spent quite a while working on building out the perfect player home, even though you have to regularly abandon it for greener pastures and new zones.
All of this complexity would be overwhelming if it were not for the excellent tutorial that all new players go through. Dune: Awakening has one of the best tutorials of any title, MMO or otherwise. It totally walks you through the various mechanics of everything from crafting to combat to the point that players probably won’t ever feel overwhelmed or have no idea what they need to do next.
Of course, while you are doing all this building, crafting and exploring, players will also be fighting the various enemies found all around the planet. Thankfully, most of the Hagga Basin where you begin your journey is a PvE only area. That means that while there can be up to 60 players in an instance, they won’t be fighting each other. However, if you are lucky enough to have friends who want to play with you, it can make navigating the early to mid-game zones a lot easier to conquer. Playing with friends is one of the biggest advantages of making Dune: Awakening into an MMO versus a single-player game. And some of the bigger activities, like mining spice, seem to be multiplayer operations at their core. It can be collected solo in the Hagga Basin if you quickly chase down a rare spice bloom’s purple cloud, but out in The Deep Desert, most raw material mining spots are going to be quickly controlled by player-guilds right after the weekly landscape refresh. On the bright side, most of them in my experience are happy to have more people join up.
In terms of the combat itself, it’s unfortunately not this game’s strong suit. It’s about average for an MMO, but far worse than most single-player shooter type titles. Long range weapons feel sort of weak, especially since many enemies in Dune: Awakening have personal shields that can only be bypassed by special damage types like fire or poison (that some sniper rifles automatically add), or by rapidly-firing weapons like SMGs that can overload shields. To reliably puncture shields every time you need a melee weapon and have to perform a slow attack – because if you know the world of Dune, you know that the slow blade pierces the shield.
Unfortunately, melee combat is pretty clunky with enemies mostly just swinging away at you and overloading you with sheer numbers. To get really good at blade fighting requires timing a parry nearly every time a swing comes in. If you do it right, you can stagger opponents and then get a few free quick hits in on them. Hitting a shielded enemy with a slow blade also staggers them, letting you follow up with some free attacks. It’s not the worst melee interface in gaming, but kind of basic, with few player special abilities to spice things up. Again, this is not unlike most MMOs out there, but it’s kind of dull after the hundredth cookie-cutter, scavenger camp raid.
You can play and enjoy Dune: Awakening quite a bit before you get to the endgame and easily get your money’s worth. But for those who want to go even further, there is The Great Desert. This mostly PvP area is 500 square kilometers, making it bigger than all of the rest of the playable areas combined. It’s also not persistent like the Hagga Basin because a massive Coriolis Storm comes in and wipes out all player bases, loot and landscapes once per week, effectively resetting the zone and forcing everyone to start over. Finally, the zone is shared by everyone on that server, meaning that there is no 60-player limit.
Fighting in The Great Desert can be a lot of fun if people enjoy combat. Most of the fighting actually seems to take place using heavily armed ornithopters, to the point that it also almost makes Dune: Awakening a flight simulator in addition to everything else that it does. It’s also a place where solo players are going to be extremely challenged, and will probably need to join a guild or at least a big group in order to survive long enough to collect some of the rare crafting materials and other loot from that zone. Again, depending on how people like to play, the endgame, being so different from everything that comes before it, is either something that PvP players will want to rush to as quickly as they can, or something that those who enjoy PvE gameplay should probably avoid.
I think that Frank Herbert would be proud to see what Funcom has done with his world. Dune: Awakening certainly sticks close to the source material (minus the parallel world of course). Beyond that, Funcom has created one of the most advanced MMO RPGs of all time. It’s really easy to fall into this new world and find something cool to do, whether you like questing, crafting, base building or combat – or want to race out to the deadly PvP action of the endgame.
Dune: Awakening isn’t for everyone. Its steep learning curve, intense survival mechanics and PvP-heavy endgame may turn away players looking for a more traditional, story-driven RPG. But for those willing to brave the sun-scorched deserts, master its complex systems and immerse themselves in Funcom’s parallel-universe vision of Arrakis, Dune: Awakening offers a bold, sprawling sandbox unlike anything else in the MMO landscape.